Hi all,

I dived a new (to me) wreck yesterday which lies off the Isle of Wight, south of Yarmouth.

She is known locally as the reindeer wreck, but is more correctly the 'Albion 2'. This ex-admiralty trawler is about 150 feet long and was sunk by a mine during ww 1. Whilst much of her plating has disappeared a skeleton of girders is still in place.

The wreck is pretty complete and stands about 5M proud of the 33M seabed. She is at an ideal depth for a 32 or 33% mix. The holds are easliy penetrated and coal etc can still be seen in the bunkers. The screw is still in place, but two of the blades are missing, they appear to have been cut off with an acetylene torch. (presume its Phospher bronze.) The boilers are intact and there is a spare shaft & screw to be seen Depth & pretty strongcurrents coming off slack make this an ideal dive for a reasonably experienced sport diver.

We dived the wreck on high water slack and had 5 - 6 M vis. The wreck was heaving with wildlife, bib, wrasse, pollack, blennies etc in abundance. Loads of lobbies & eating crabs (luvverly supper last night )

The wreck was also heaving with fishing weights etc and about a dozen lobbie pots are caught up in various places. A couple of our lot brought up about 10kg of fishing weights! There were also at least 3 shiny anchors complete with chain etc.

There are 2 downsides. The seabed is pretty silty so care is needed to preserve the vis & I would imagine vis would be awful in less than ideal conditions. She is also pretty hard to find as the superstructure is pretty skeletal, the beam is faily narrow so a bit of time& care is needed to shot her properly. If you want to try the numbers are 50 36.62N; 01 36.33W.

We took the rhib out from Poole, it's a 75 min run from there so not one for iffy weather conditions, but well worth the trip on a day like yesterday A very nice wreck and a real change from the usual suspects if you are in the area.

Cheers

Alan